Flood control projects stalled, ignored
Linda Hughes checks the creek across the street from her Pitcairn home every time it rains.
It's a scene repeated every summer throughout the region's valleys, where families fear the type of flash flood that submerged Hughes' basement in 1997.
"I don't want to go through something like that again -- not if I can help it," said her husband, Bill Hughes. "(The government) definitely needs to do something, for sure."
Several rounds of flooding spurred action: Streams leading to the three rivers have been dredged, flood walls strengthened and more money secured to create retention ponds and study flood risks around Western Pennsylvania.
But flood control can be expensive, lengthy and easily snared in bureaucratic webs, leaders say, with some multimillion-dollar projects stalled for decades.
"There are competing interests at work here," said David Dzombak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. "And there aren't strong drivers to be aggressive on stormwater management.
"We know where the problems are. And, after they get hit, there's a little flurry of activity; but quite often, that dies away pretty quickly."
Government officials are still responding to flood damage caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Last month, the federal government approved $96,000 to study flood risks, focusing locally on Marshall, Ross, Shaler, East Deer and Tarentum. That will give engineers the flexibility to try different approaches to flood control, said Curt Meeder, chief of planning for the Army Corps of Engineers in Pittsburgh.
The money comes on the heels of millions more for Etna and Millvale, areas hardest hit by Ivan and then again in 2007. In February, Shaler got an Allegheny County grant from casino money, the last bit it needs for a $365,000 project on Girty's Run to help control water upstream.
But Pitcairn is an example of how projects can stall even when money isn't a problem. A 1997 flood damaged more than 450 homes there. The state has pledged nearly $8 million for flood control. Yet more than 10 years later, work along Dirty Camp Run, expected to cost $8.1 million in all, has yet to begin.
The borough and county, in the meantime, completed smaller projects reducing flooding. A garage that spanned the stream is now gone, and county workers diverted the stream in 2003.
But the big work lingers while Pitcairn switches engineering firms and waits for easements.
"It's really dragged on. We hoped it would be done," Mayor Betsy Stevick said. "(The problem) is pretty well subsided. Frankly, a lot of the families have done a little bit of their own."
The project had early delays because of a dispute with Monroeville. It's a common problem where development in one town can lead to flooding in the next one.
In some cases, leaders from communities that could be affected by a project meet early in the planning phase.
A South Hills Area Council of Governments study in 2001 recommended 17 flood-control projects. Eleven of them remain undone. Some South Hills communities can't get state and federal grants, so they determined they didn't have money for the projects, council Executive Director Lou Gorski said.
The North Hills Council of Governments recently had all its communities update their stormwater management laws, the first time they had done so since the 1980s. The effort, which Dzombak called one of the most proactive in the region, requires new developers and new property owners to control rainwater, which should lessen flooding downstream, most notably in Girty's Run and Pine Creek.
"In some cases, we're trying to correct the wrongs of decades ago," said Wayen E. Roller, the council's executive director.
Hampton will spend $10.7 million in state and federal money to buy property, build a retention pond and lake, and make road improvements to better control water around the Route 8 and Duncan Avenue intersection. Shaler has used $4.5 million in federal aid to buy 45 lots and turn them to green space in three flood-plain neighborhoods, township Manager Tim Rogers said.
But 15 homeowners remain on a waiting list with the potential for more, Rogers said. Clearing out endangered homes in the Fall Run area could take another 10 years, Roller said. The neighborhood is stuck in transition, with browning, empty lots sporadically spread throughout a community of aging homes.
"I'm still heartbroken over it," said neighbor Joan Currington, 71. After the 2004 flood, she had to move next door. "Actually, they've done nothing to prevent more flooding. It could happen -- you get an inch and a half of rain and you could get flooded."
Carnegie, which was devastated by the 2004 flooding, had a plan to buy properties in the flood plain.
Borough Manager Stephen C. Vincenti is comforted by the work that has been done. The corps removed the equivalent of 5,000 trailers of gravel from Chartiers Creek, and cleaned out other vegetation and debris from the banks last summer. The U.S. Geological Survey added Carnegie to its real-time stream-flow tracking system.
"I think for the most part, we can safely say Carnegie is open for business again," Vincenti said. "I don't have to look at the rain gauges every time the sky darkens."
